Facing public criticism, Rep. Julie Casimiro resigns

Necessary but overdue

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Rep. Julie Casimiro is ending her final term in office early, confirming in a Monday afternoon email to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office that she is resigning at the close of the day.

The three-paragraph email, obtained by Rhode Island Current, comes amid mounting pressure for Casimiro to give up her seat — and legislative salary — because she no longer lives in Rhode Island. Casimiro, formerly of North Kingstown, moved to Hardeeville, South Carolina, as of July 1, as first reported by the Boston Globe. The 64-year-old Democratic lawmaker had already announced she would not seek reelection to the District 31 seat representing North Kingstown and Exeter after 10 years in office.

But she intended to serve out her fifth and final term to its completion, refusing to cave to calls to resign, including from House Speaker Christopher Blazejewski. Although state lawmakers only meet for the first six months of the year, their taxpayer-funded salary is spread across the entire calendar year. Casimiro was earning $800 every two weeks, plus health insurance, under the $20,922 annual salary for rank-and-file lawmakers.

“I would have preferred to quietly exit Rhode Island politics, but it seems as though that didn’t happen,” Casimiro wrote in the email.

Critics, including Neronha, cited the state constitutional qualifications for elected officeholders, which include state residency, as reason why Casimiro could no longer keep her seat. A separate section of state law also defines residency as a “fixed and established domicile,” determined by a “factual physical presence in the voting district on a regular basis incorporating an intention to reside for an indefinite period.” 

Neronha cited both sections of state law in an email to Casimiro Friday. He did not call on her to resign, but asked for a written explanation of how she met the state legal requirements to remain in office while living in South Carolina. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Charlestown had a similar situation in 2022 when Charlestown Citizens Alliance Town Council member Cody Clarkin moved to Westerly but maintained the fiction that he still lived in Charlestown. Scout's Honor! CCA leader and Charlestown Planning Commissar needed Clarkin to continue on the Council to conserve the CCA's 3-2 majority. The CCA ended up losing that majority anyway due to their mishandling of Charlestown taxpayers' money when the Charlestown Residents United (CRU) walloped them at the polls.  - Will Collette

House District 36 Committee unanimously endorses Rep. Tina Spear for re-election in September 9 Democratic Primary

Her hard work earns support against challenger

By Will Collette

Today, the House District 36 Democratic Committee voted unanimously to officially endorse incumbent Rep. Tina Spears in the upcoming September 9 Democratic Primary. 

The Committee is filing this endorsement in all towns included in the district. House District 36 covers all of Charlestown and Block Island, plus small sections of Westerly and South Kingstown.

The last time Charlestown voters faced a Democratic primary over who will represent House District 36 was twenty years ago. In 2006, longtime State Representative Donna Walsh defeated DINO incumbent Matt McHugh by 685 to 461 in that year's primary.

Donna never faced another primary opponent and served until 2016 when she was defeated by Blake “Flip” Filippi (Republican/Libertarian), an all-round strange guy who in recent years has railed against seals and vaccines but has mostly stuck to raising cattle and his family’s Block Island businesses.

Flip's surprise announcement in 2022 to drop out of Rhode Island politics opened the door for Tina’s election as our Representative where she has been a productive and effective legislator.

From Tina’s website:

Tina has spent the last decade advocating for people with disabilities, and is currently Executive Director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island. Her own experience as the parent of a child with significant health challenges led her to become an ardent advocate for families of children with disabilities. She has been a frequent presence at the State House over the last decade, working to defend Medicaid benefits, increase wages for caregivers and help win paid leave for people who must leave work to care for a new child or an ill family member.

​Opposing Tina in the September 9 Democratic Primary is Leah J. Boisclair who is a self-described “Sex Crimes Defense Attorney in Rhode Island.” On her law practice’s website, she graphically lists what types of crimes she will defend, including child rape, domestic violence, homicide, drug crime, white collar crime and so on.

Don’t take my word for it – go to her website.

I was especially surprised at the way she depicted how she would defend against sex crimes. Here’s a screenshot from her website:

Now, if you switch to Boisclair’s campaign website, you’ll see a very different tone as well as content. She mimics Tina’s priority issues of education, environment, affordable housing and health care. There is no record of Boisclair having actually done anything on these issues, but hey, if you want to run as a Democrat, you must at least pretend.

Boisclair glosses over the sordid details of her law practice saying only:

I went through our local schools, earned a political science degree at URI, and graduated cum laude from Roger Williams University School of Law in 2019. I’m licensed in multiple states and federal courts. Before opening my own firm, I worked on criminal and union cases — and then built The Law Office of Leah J. Boisclair, LLC from the ground up…. As an attorney, I stand up for people who need someone in their corner. [Emphasis added].

Make of that what you will. But remember that attorneys, especially those in private practice, CHOOSE who represent.

And those of us who are registered Democratic voters living in House District 36 also CHOOSE who we want to represent us. So, on September 9, please support Rep. Tina Spears in the Democratic Primary.

DISCLOSURE: For years, I have been a member of the House District 36 Democratic Committee and proudly voted today to support Tina Spears in her campaign for re-election.  – Will Collette

Charlestown Citizens Alliance has another phony issue

Platner has a million dollar grievance…it’s about her million dollar grift

By Will Collette

After a period of quiet, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) de facto leader Ruth Platner has gotten around to complaining about a November vote by the Town Council to issue a $1.05 million bond drawn from the voter-approved 2015 $2 million open space bond fund.

Platner has been kvetching about this matter for the past few months indicating that only she has the right to make any decisions about this bond funding.

That bond referendum was approved by the narrowest of margins - 11 votes. Rather than use the bond authority for the purpose voters intended, Planning Commissar Platner went on a buying spree, spending more than a million dollars in CASH from the town's General Fund to shop for land usually at inflated prices and often as a favor to a CCA client.

Around 60% of Charlestown is already protected

Platner’s actions were contrary to what the bond referendum actually said. However, that didn’t matter since the CCA-controlled Town Council gave Platner anything she wanted from the town's deliberately bloated surplus, essentially Platner's slush fund.

In 2022, CCA financial mismanagement – which included Ruth’s slush fund and shady land deals – led voters to strip the CCA of Town Council control. No more blank checks. Voters completed the CCA’s ouster in 2024.

The winners of the 2022 and 2024 elections, Charlestown Residents United (CRU), worked diligently to repair the financial damage caused by 10 years of CCA reign. According to data from the RI Auditor General, they succeeded.

However, there was a remaining piece of unresolved business - the over a million in cash taken from the town’s General Fund for land deals, instead of using the bond as intended by Charlestown voters in 2015.

Town Council President Deb Carney (CRU) sought to redress these improper purchases by pushing for the town to issue a million-dollar bond from the 2015 open space bond authorization to pay back the town’s General Fund. Her resolution passed by a 3-1 vote.

Platner (left) giving former Town Council President
Tom Gentz his instructions. Photo by Will Collette

Contrary to the foggy claims made by Platner (and dissenting Council member Stephen Stokes), this is NOT new spending. It balances the books and corrects the CCA’s mistake, putting the money back where it belongs.

Platner says – with no evidence - the CRU majority has some nefarious scheme in mind for the $1.05 million.

This latest CCA-concocted phony issue is entirely of Ruth Platner’s creation. She was the one who decided after the 2015 bond passed not to use it and instead draw cash for her land grabs. 

Her motive? Clearly, she wants to keep that $2 million bond authority untouched as a future source of cash for her shady land deals.

Each time between 2015 and 2022 that Platner came up with a new land deal, she proclaimed voters had given her a mandate (by 11 votes) to buy land regardless of need or, most tellingly, the price. Leaving the bond authority untouched permitted Platner to use it as her excuse for more land deals, provided of course that the CCA held a Town Council majority.

Just about everyone in Charlestown loves open space. I know I do. That's why Charlestown has so much of it - about 60% of all land in town. See the town map, above.

But few, other than the CCA, want to continue to add more land blindly and stupidly. Opponents of Platner's open space Über Alles approach want future town land deals to be strategic and priced right.

Platner pines for the days when the CCA controlled the Council because that meant that SHE controlled the Council. In this year’s election, she hopes to get that control back.

She just managed to get her stooge, Bonnita Van Slyke, back onto the Council by getting 39% of the vote in Charlestown’s December 2 Special Election.

Consider this the opening salvo for the 2026 Charlestown municipal election. As they have during their history in Charlestown, expect the CCA to fire off more lies and concoct more fake issues to retake power. Let’s not let them get away with it.

Republican Chas Calenda sworn in as interim U.S. attorney for Rhode Island

"MAGA stooge" will be Rhode Island's top federal cop for the next 3 months

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is not a Calenda fan

For at least the next 120 days, Rhode Island has a freshly appointed federal attorney who will prosecute criminal cases on behalf of the U.S. government and represent it in civil matters.

Charles “Chas” Calenda was sworn in as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Rhode Island on Tuesday morning. Chief U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. presided over the ceremony at the federal courthouse in Providence. 

Calenda, a Republican, will act as Rhode Island’s top federal law enforcement officer, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, and work across the street from the courthouse at the DOJ’s local office. 

Calenda (left) bears quite a resemblance to "Newman,"
played by Wayne Knight on the Jerry Seinfeld Show.
Might be why Trump picked him.

“I am proud to be part of this team so we can keep Rhode Islanders safe from those seeking to do us harm,” Calenda said in a statement Tuesday. “I look forward to the important work ahead and will always remember that I served the people of Rhode Island above all else.”

Calenda did not respond to requests for additional comment. But he told The Boston Globe, which first reported his appointment on Saturday, that the interim term will last 120 days, or until someone is found to permanently fill the role. He also said that he will step down from his role as a West Greenwich town councilor. 

When asked Tuesday about the expected duration of Calenda’s term, Lindsay Lague, a spokesperson for the Rhode Island DOJ office, acknowledged the request but could not immediately confirm a definite timeline. 

This is the homestretch to Charlestown’s December 2 Town Council special election

On Tuesday, please support Democrat Jill Fonneman for Charlestown Town Council

By Will Collette

Well, another day and another huge postcard from former Council member and Charlestown Citizens Alliance spokes-troll Bonnita Van Slyke. Maybe before Election Day on Tuesday, she’ll send us a real poster-sized card featuring her and her dog Sam.

I know that Sam is a very good boy. I also know Bonnie was crap as a former town council member. She bailed from the Council in 2022 just before the CCA got ousted by Charlestown voters for messing up the town’s money but now she wants back onto the Council.

Bonnie was a central figure in creating and then covering up the CCA’s “$3 million oopsie,” padded surplus fund accounts and shady land deals by her boss, CCA founder and de facto leader Ruth Platner.

Charlestown’s money problems during the decade of CCA rule, which included Van Slyke’s entire term on the Town Council, were documented by 2022 reports by the Rhode Island Auditor General and the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council. These reports were never acknowledged by the CCA. Click HERE and HERE for more details.

I have been calling for Van Slyke to own up to her mistakes and then apologize. Instead, she produces these expensive postcards filled with platitudes and vague promises about environmental issues where there is no fundamental difference between her and her opponents.

Vote for Jill Fonnemann (D). She also has a dog
plus far better ideas than her competitors 

I don’t expect her to dump ashes on her head and prostrate herself in front of Town Hall. But I do expect her to stop telling fairy tales about the way the CCA mismanaged Charlestown’s tax dollars and then tried to cover it up.

My choice for Council is Democrat Jill Fonneman who has been forthright about taking on Charlestown’s issues and pledges to work hard for fair taxation and trying to revitalize our blighted small business landscape. I blame the CCA’s business-hostile approach for our Boulevard of Broken Dreams (thank you, Green Day), better known as Route One where there are more shuttered businesses than growing concerns.

Boarded up derelict businesses are not compatible with Route One’s status as a Scenic Highway. Jill wants to see Charlestown make a concerted effort to turn this around.

Jill brings youth and solid business experience in boosting the Rathskeller’s success as well as fund-raising events to boost local charities and to assist the workers after the devastating fire at the Matunuck Oyster Bar. See video below.

Van Slyke brings nothing to the table but her awful past performance on the Council where she was the puppet of Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner. Van Slyke simply recites the tired old Platner-tudes about open space Über alles. If you think about it, a vote for Van Slyke is really a vote for her master Ruth Platner.

There’s no point in talking about mail-in or early voting since Monday and Tuesday are the last days to cast ballots. Now is the time to make your decision about whether you want to move forward with Jill Fonneman or take a big step backwards with Van Slyke.

Voting on December 2 (Tuesday) will take place ONLY at Town Hall from 7 AM to 8 PM.

With only days before Charlestown’s December 2 Town Council special election, CCA candidate dodges the real questions

CCA tries to deny and deflect its fiscal failings

By Will Collette

For continued good government in Charlestown,
elect endorsed Democrat Jill Fonnemann for Town Council 

Call it click-baiting if you will, but there’s a remarkable similarity between the way the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) treats Charlestown’s financial meltdown that led to their 2022 and 2024 election defeats and the way Donald Trump is dealing with his friendship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

I have been urging the CCA to come clean on how they managed to lose $3 million dollars used to fund CCA leader Ruth Platner’s shady land deals and then ran a cover-up campaign to hide what they did.

After two straight election drubbings, you’d think someone in the CCA might have figured out that rather than deny, distract and deflect, maybe the CCA should admit and apologize.

A key figure in those scandals is one of the December 2 candidates, Bonnita B. Van Slyke. Van Slyke was on the Charlestown Town Council throughout the 2022 scandal but bailed out before the 2022 election rather than be on the CCA ticket rejected by Charlestown voters.

She tried a comeback in 2024 but ran in last place, 10^th out of ten, as the CCA tried to make that election about dark skies (seriously, the darkness of the sky was their big issue) rather than address the financial mess they caused. The CCA lost the last of their Council seats in that election.

And now, here comes Van Slyke again.

In this special election, Van Slyke and the CCA again want to focus voter attention on “issues” where there is no disagreement among the three candidates – how much we all love Charlestown and its beauty, and clean water, green forests, dark sky, and golden beaches. And critters ranging from wildlife to dogs. She wants to talk about “over-development in sensitive areas” but without talking about how the CCA allowed shoreline property owners to do anything they wanted.

Why does Van Slyke want to raise these issues? Because she and the CCA want to distract voters away from other important issues the CCA doesn’t want to talk about. These include:

·    Who can voters trust to properly manage their money?

·    Who will do the better job of keeping administrative costs and taxes down while providing effective government services?

·    Who will run an honest and open government, free of shady deals, secrecy and attempts to cover up mistakes?

·    Why pile up money in surpluses by over-taxing residents?

·    Who will do better at ensuring fair taxation?

Voters sent the CCA a message in 2022 and 2024: if you screw up the money, you can’t run the town. 

Obviously, they didn’t get the message by running Van Slyke, a key player in their financial SNAFU, as their candidate in this special election.

The heart of the CCA’s money management deficiencies is its obsessive effort to turn Charlestown into an exclusive retirement enclave for the independently wealthy while driving out families, mostly those living north of Route One, while erecting barriers to any new families moving in.

All the gray-marked areas in the center of the map are
Narragansett tribal land - i.e. open space

According to data from the town’s Comprehensive Plan, belatedly submitted by CCA and Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, around 60% of Charlestown is tax-exempt or tax-favored open space. See map 👉. But that’s not enough for Platner, Van Slyke and the CCA. 

Through a series of shady land deals, Charlestown expanded the amount of town-owned open space often by buying property at much higher than its assessed value. CLICK HERE for a prime example.

They usually paid cash despite a voter-approved referendum that called for the town to use low-interest municipal bonds. Paying cash meant the cost of major capital expenditures were dumped on taxpayers that year instead of being amortized over time.

Several of their land deals were blocked by public pressure after we dug up public records exposing the details. Click on the links to see what we exposed in two of those deals: the SPA-Gate scandal HERE and the Saw Mill Pond scam HERE.

Under the CCA, this was the typical response
you got after paying for a public record

After these records wrecked the sweetheart deal behind SPA-Gate, the CCA made their lapdog Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz clamp down on public information. Requests under the state’s open records law were routinely delayed. Records requested were subjected to careful legal and staff review to make sure that everything that could be withheld was indeed withheld. The town charged the maximum amount it could.

The result was that records about land deals were then offered with cost estimates of several hundred dollars payable in advance. If you paid the money, all you eventually got were pages almost totally blacked out. See sample 👈to the left.

I believe these secrecy practices not only contradicted the CCA's claims about "open and transparent government," but also contributed significantly to Charlestown's out of control administrative costs (see table below).

Van Slyke herself was behind the most outrageous abuse of the open government norms when she introduced a resolution to buy a land parcel but insisted that the name of the seller, the location of the property and the price for the purchase were withheld from the public!

The CCA Town Council majority approved the deal to proceed.

We later discovered the land in question was the Saw Mill Pond property that was already classified as open space and taxed accordingly by the town. The proposed purchase price was never actually disclosed but based on the paperwork, it had to be at least $800,000. The assessed value was only $312,800.

Van Slyke and her CCA Council colleague Susan Cooper voted yes to proceed with the deal. However, they were thwarted by no votes from late CRU council member Grace Klinger and Council President Deb Carney plus the recusal ofCCA council member Cody Clarkin on ethical grounds.

If Van Slyke really wants to talk about land use, these concrete cases of waste, fraud and abuse need to be part of that conversation.

While debates over land use raged, the town’s administrative functions were undergoing some serious dry rot. Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz geared Town Hall to serve the CCA’s political agenda. Under Stanky and CCA leadership, Charlestown racked up the worst administrative costs in the state. That’s according to the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council. Check out Charlestown at the very bottom of this 👇table. More details HERE.

Aided by former Budget Commission chair Dick Sartor, Charlestown accumulated a massive surplus far in excess of what was needed. Here’s what the Rhode Island Auditor General wrote in his report on Charlestown about that surplus during the CCA’s final years, saying "unrestricted fund balances significantly exceeded the GFOA reserve recommendation (17% of fund expenditures/other financing uses)."

The CCA's policy resembled putting taxpayer money under the mattress.

Apparently, that excess surplus was moved around from pocket to pocket without proper management. In early 2022, the town’s auditor reported that $3 million had apparently been misplaced for an almost two-year period. This came to be known as the “$3 Million Oopsie.”

Van Slyke was the public voice of the CCA in trying to deny, diminish, deflect then ultimately attack critics of the “Oopsie.” Behind the scenes, Stanky and Budget chair Sartor worked hard to come up with any answer that didn’t involve blame falling on them or the CCA.

Van Slyke’s only glancing mention of this whole mess has in her most recent mailer where she continues to plug an unnecessarily high surplus fund to deal with “hurricanes and other crises.”

From Van Slyke election mailer, received November 22.

The state Auditor General has already criticized the inappropriately high fund balance salted away by the CCA when it ran the town. (See above). Remember: it’s your tax dollars being put away in Bonnita’s mayonnaise jar.

I could go on but suffice to say that since the Town Council control shifted from the CCA to Charlestown Residents United (CRU), things have gotten a lot better. Don’t take my word for it, look at what the RI Auditor General reported:

Note that the final column on the right is the first year (2023) that Charlestown began to be managed by the Charlestown Residents United Council majority. The previous four years were under the CCA's control

Cathy and I have already voted by mail for endorsed Democrat Jill Fonnemann who is also supported by the Charlestown Residents United. She manages a large chunk of the Rathskeller’s business which makes her far more qualified than Van Slyke to be diligent about protecting the taxpayers. 

You can meet Jill and see for yourself why she is the best choice for Town Council at the General Stanton Inn Tuesday night.

Let’s turn out for Jill and make her Charlestown’s next Town Council member.

The Charlestown Town Council December 2 Special Election

Who is best for Charlestown?

By Will Collette

Now that the Blue Tide has swept over Nov. 4’s off-year elections, it’s time for Charlestown to focus on its December 2 special election to pick a successor to Rippy Serra whose unexpected death created a vacancy.Rippy served as Council vice-president, was a stalwart in the Charlestown Republican Town Committee (CRTC) and a leader in the non-partisan Charlestown Residents United (CRU) that ended the long rule of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance with landslide wins in the 2022 and 2024 elections. The December 2 election features three women who will appear in the following order on the ballot. 

At the top of the ballot is Democrat Jill Fonnemann well known to patrons of the Rathskeller where she works as beverage director and has organized numerous community fund-raisers. She is endorsed by the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee (CDTC) and the CRU. Spoiler alert: Jill is also my personal choice. Second on the ballot is Laura Rom, chair of the CRTC, who wants to keep Rippy’s seat Republican. She currently serves on the town Planning Commission and chairs the Charter Revision Commission. She is endorsed by the CRTC and shares a joint endorsement from the CRU with Jill Fonnemann. In a statement, the CRU explained why it issued this unusual joint endorsement:

A Message from Charlestown Residents United (CRU)

As many in the Charlestown community know, Council Member, Rippy Serra passed away this past August.  His dedication, integrity, and commitment to serving all residents left a lasting impact, and his loss is still felt by many in our town.

As we look ahead to the upcoming election to fill this important Council seat, Charlestown Residents United (CRU) recognizes the contributions that both candidates - Laura Rom (R) and Jill Fonnemann (D) - could bring to the Council.  We believe each candidate offers valuable experience and a strong commitment to serving our community.

Consistent with our mission as a nonpartisan, community-focused organization, CRU supports both candidates equally and remains committed to a respectful, informed and inclusive process.

We hope every resident will take the time to learn about each candidate’s vision, values and priorities and vote in a way that best reflects their hopes for Charlestown.

Together, we can continue fostering respect, transparency and collaboration in our community.

Charlestown has the distinction of being governed effectively and without drama – despite the partisan rancor roiling the country – by the CRU’s bi-partisan coalition. Together, they ended the financial mismanagement, shady land deals, secrecy and cover-up that marked the 10-year reign of the CCA. Thus the dual endorsement.

The third name on the ballot is a familiar one to any resident who follows local politics, Bonnita B. Van Slyke who is endorsed by the CCA.

Van Slyke on the right. Her puppet master
Ruth Platner to the left

Van Slyke has become the CCA’s main spokesperson, delivering the script prepared for her by the CCA’s de facto leader Planning Commissar Ruth Platner.

I’ve devoted a lot of time to debunking the endless stream of false statements that came from the Platner-Van Slyke duo over the past 10 years. There are a total of 62 articles so far featuring Van Slyke. You can read them all by CLICKING HERE.

The CCA is already cranking up its propaganda machine. As usual, they seem compelled to lie, even when it is so easy to disprove them. Here’s a “whopper” (one of Van Slyke’s favorite words) in their latest piece about the CCA and Van Slyke’s greatest claim to fame:

“Reduced the tax rate to one of the lowest in Rhode Island and adopted a policy to reserve sufficient savings to protect taxpayers in the event of emergencies.

This is a two-part false claim. First, the CCA did NOT reduce the tax rate and certainly not during Van Slyke’s tenure from 2014 to 2022. Simply look at the tax rate table from Town Tax Assessor Ken Swain that shows the tax rate steadily increased when the CCA took power in 2008 and dropped dramatically when the CRU kicked them out in 2022.

The CCA took power in 2008 and
were kicked out by the CRU in the
2022 election.

While Charlestown’s tax rate is very low compared to other municipalities, property values driven by non-resident purchases, not anything the CCA did or didn’t do, that determined your property tax bottom line.

Second, the CCA policy of raising the actual taxes you pay to pad the town’s surplus fund account spawned such scandals as the $3 million that went missing (“misallocated” was the term the CCA used).

It drove a series of shady land deals where Van Slyke acted as Platner’s puppet plus a systematic cover-up campaign by CCA tool, former Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz.

Van Slyke's other recent campaign pieces are also packed with easily disproved and discredited claims as we'll be showing you over the coming weeks.

Over the month of November leading up to the December 2 special election, we’ll be covering these issues and more. 

We’ll look at why Charlestown needs Jill Fonnemann, a young, fresh new face, on the Council. 

We’ll also examine Van Slyke’s past record and current claims to see what Charlestown will get if she is returned to the Council.

Here are the ways you can vote:

You can also get an application for a mail ballot by e-mailing Town Clerk Amy Weinreich at arweinreich@charlestownri.gov. Amy turned my own request around very quickly.

Last Tuesday, November 4, record numbers of Americans turned out for off-year elections. “No Kings” translated into a Blue Wave that swept from Virginia to California sending a clear message that Americans do not want a corrupt, inept and repressive government.

We had that in Charlestown for 10 years under CCA rule. Your vote for Democrat Jill Fonnemann keeps Charlestown on a forward track for the benefit of all Charlestown’s people.

Charlestown will soon hold a special election to fill Town Council vacancy

Meanwhile, CCA reminds voters again why they lost the last two elections

By Will Collette

Rippy Serra, RIP

At a December 2 Special Election, Charlestown voters will be asked to pick a replacement for recently deceased Town Council Vice-president Rippy Serra who died unexpectedly on August 8. This means another election pitting Charlestown’s former rulers, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) against their arch-rivals, Charlestown Residents United (CRU).

Rippy was one of the leaders of CRU who whipped the CCA in the 2022 election, ending their 10-year reign as Charlestown’s rulers. The CRU completed the job by beating all five CCA Council candidates in 2024.

Earlier than expected, we get to see the CCA’s plan to regain Charlestown hegemony when they pick one of their own to seek to regain a seat on the Town Council. The oddsmakers favor CCA warhorse Bonnita Van Slyke who, in the CCA’s Bizarro Charlestown, earned the honor through her last place finish in the 2024 election. But who knows, we could be in for a surprise.

Since getting pounded in 2024, the CCA has been relatively muted, posting mainly public event notices on their website. But occasionally, they post a political piece that touts their core value of stopping all housing development while pushing more town land purchases.

Dark Sky is nice, but not a cash cow

How the CCA views plans for Ninigret Park

In the 2024 election, the CCA made Charlestown’s dark sky their central campaign theme accusing the CRU of wanting to install stadium lights on every street corner, while the CCA wants to keep Charlestown dark, even during the daytime, so we can see distant galaxies with the naked eye.

Of course, I’m exaggerating but so has the CCA every time they have seriously suggested that the CRU wants to despoil Ninigret Park so they can obliterate the nighttime sky. The difference is that I’m joking and they’re not.

The CCA launched a new dark sky offensive right after losing the 2024 election with a piece called Stargazing Tourism: How Charlestown’s Dark Skies Could Boost Our Local Economy under the byline of Sarah Fletcher. Fletcher is a losing CCA Town Council candidate who had a 6^th place finish.

In this article the CCA claims Charlestown is ripe for “astro-tourism” through which Charlestown can emulate England’s northernmost region, Northumberland. The CCA claims Northumberland takes in “an estimated €25 million each year from visitors who come just to enjoy the stars.” As usual, the CCA doesn’t source their claim and I could find nothing to back it up other than articles that discuss the region’s high hopes for tourism.

Northumberland and Hadrian's Wall. From Wikipedia, 
By PaulT (Gunther Tschuch) - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

I’ve been to Northumberland and neighboring Scotland. I went there to walk Hadrian’s Wall, as well as some ancient castle ruins. There is an enormous swath of dour, treeless moorland between Newcastle and Edinburgh, attractive in a Heathcliff-Wuthering Heights sort of way, where indeed the sky is dark and great for stargazing. But there’s no evidence of the CCA’s claimed tourist bonanza.

As if they knew this article was coming, the CCA ran a piece this morning noting a positive mention in Travel and Leisure magazine about the Frosty Drew Observatory in Ninigret Park. My congratulations to Frosty Drew but I remain unconvinced this will have any effect on Charlestown's tourism economy.

Look, I’ve often said I love our dark sky – I wanted to be an astronomer when I was a kid. Relative to Providence, our sky is wonderful. But I’ve travelled enough to know that the CCA’s fetish for dark skies only means they’ve never seen the sky over Montana. Or New Mexico. Or the Rockies. Or Nebraska. Or even New Hampshire and Vermont. Given the multitude of places near and far with darker skies than ours, it’s silly to think our small patch of night sky will make us a tourist mecca.

Unless the CCA manages to black out South Kingstown, Narragansett and Westerly and bans cars from travelling at night with lights on, Charlestown will never be the black hole tourist haven the CCA wants it to be. Besides, given how our population during the summer swells from 8,000 to 30,000, do we really need more tourists?

If the CCA wants to run on the dark sky issue again in the upcoming special election, fine.

The frenzy to buy more open space

The CCA has also ventured opinions about how the CRU is managing the budget and dealing with the balance left in the town’s open space bonding authority.

There’s a tie-in between the CCA’s odd and ultimately dysfunctional management of town finances and their dark sky fetish since it all seems centered on CCA founder and de facto leader Ruth Platner’s fixation on the need to endlessly expand town-owned open space.

According to maps in Platner’s own Comprehensive Plan, more than 60% of Charlestown’s land mass is already protected from development. 

Platner’s iron-fisted control of the Charlestown Planning Commission has made new housing construction as difficult as possible even under new state legislation to alleviate the affordable housing crisis.

In 2015, Platner championed a $2 million bond that Platner used as collateral to acquire land, usually at inflated prices, to set aside as open space. 

Contrary to Platner’s claim that she has the voters’ mandate, the 2015 bond issue passed by only 11 votes. That’s a margin of less than 1%.

Despite the bond authority, the actual purchases of land – over a million dollars’ worth - were made through the use of taxpayer money from the town’s General Fund with some state taxpayer funding. That doesn’t count the $2.14 million that came out of 2004 bonds to buy the moraine property that was proposed as the site of the Whalerock wind turbines.

We’ve been paying cash rather than issue the low-interest municipal bonds authorized in the 2015 referendum. This fits the CCA’s peculiar notion that the town should generally pay in cash for capital investments rather than issue bonds like normal municipalities.

Remember, we all avail ourselves of low-interest financing such as mortgages and car loans to make major capital investments. For normal people, it makes more sense to use credit than saving for years to be able to pay cash for a house or a car or stove.

These days, you only see major cash transactions when money laundering is involved or purchases by elderly folks who grew up during the Great Depression. I don’t propose a spend-and-borrow spree but do suggest we should act like a normal municipality.

The result of the CCA credit-phobia was the creation of various accounts throughout the Charlestown budget to cover various contingencies. The CCA also increased property taxes nearly every year during its reign to pump up the town’s Uncommitted Fund Balance.

They were reluctant to spend any of that money except, of course, on Platner’s shady land deals.

The Saw Mill Pond scam

Ruth Platner complained bitterly after one such deal fell through. She blames CRU Council members for blocking the 2022 Saw Mill Pond deal even though it was one of the CCA Council members who caused the deal to fail. It’s a case worth a closer look especially since it’s a key Platner bullet point in her case against Charlestown Residents United.

This deal began in 2021 with a mysterious, unprecedented motion by then CCA Council rep Bonnita Van Slyke to authorize Charlestown to pursue DEM funding for a piece of property. She wanted the location, name of the owner and even the proposed sale price kept secret from the public. The CCA majority on the Council naturally approved this motion.

In early 2022, DEM approved a $400,000 50% matching grant. That meant the deal price was going to be at least $800,000. We also found out that the piece of property was ALREADY designated as open space and had been getting tax breaks for years under the Farm, Forest and Open Space program. The assessed value of this property was $312,800. 

CRU Council members Deb Carney and the late Grace Klinger pushed for an honest appraisal before buying land for more than double the assessed value since it was already open space. The 3-2 CCA majority usually overrode such objections, but not this time.

Former CCA Council member Cody Clarkin (←left) recused himself because his mom was an abutter. Without his vote, the deal died on a 2-2 tie vote. 

So ended the CCA Council majority’s last shady land deal before voters booted them out of power later that year.

How much is enough?

Generally, the CCA believes you can’t have too much money salted away. The CCA still takes that position, criticizing the CRU-led Town Council for failing to continue to build up the fund balance. For its part, the CRU has held that raising taxes just to salt away cash to never use it except in dire emergencies – or to satisfy Ruth Platner’s land lust - is poor money management.

If they were still controlling Charlestown, the CCA would probably put all of the town's revenue into mayonnaise jars buried in former Budget Commission Chair Richard Sartor's back yard. 

It's a fair question to ask how much the town needs to save especially since the Trump regime has made it clear states and localities are on their own in local emergencies. We already have enough uncommitted cash to run the town for a year with no outside help. But the CCA wants to add more plus some unspecified amount for other catastrophes that might occur over a 10 year period.

Charlestown is lucky to have so much cash that we can even have this conversation, but at what point does it become ridiculous to pay more taxes to soothe the CCA’s anxieties?

The CCA’s antiquated beliefs in squirreling away cash ultimately bit them in the ass. Having so many excess fund accounts led to sloppy money management that culminated in the infamous 2022 “$3 million oopsie.” Town auditors noticed $3 million was missing, later found to have been “misallocated” for two years to a fund where it didn’t belong.

Rather than learn the Watergate lesson that it’s the cover-up that gets you, the CCA tried to lie, deny and deflect their way out of trouble. However, it cost the CCA the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Getting our money back

The CCA has pitched a fit over a proposal from Council President Deb Carney to actually issue the $2 million in open space bonds and use half of it to reimburse the town’s General Fund for the money the CCA spent to buy land for Platner.

Platner says this would violate the will of the 50.9% of the voters who ok’d the 2015 bond issue. Except, as Platner knows, the ballot question read:

“Shall the Town of Charlestown finance the acquisition, preservation or protection of open space or any interest therein alone or in conjunction with federal agencies, state agencies, land conservancies, land trusts or preservation organizations for preservation and approve the issuance of bonds and notes therefor in an amount not to exceed $2,000,000?” 

The CCA used General Fund money to buy the land, not bond money. Deb Carney’s proposal to use the bond authority to put money back into the General Fund keeps faith with the voters’ intention to issue bonds for open space buys.

The key word is “therefor” which means “for that object or purpose.” Voters approved $2 million in bonds to “finance the acquisition…of open space…” not to set up an untouchable cash kitty. Paying for land deals from the General Fund and then failing to use bonding authority to put the money back was not what voters approved in 2015.

I hope Platner and the CCA test their self-serving interpretation of the 2015 bond referendum with today’s voters in the upcoming special election. I also hope Charlestown voters will pay attention and come out to vote. Our town budget only drew 160 voters out of 6,895 active voters on the rolls.

We’ll see how close I’ve come to forecasting how the CCA will approach the upcoming December 2 Special Election. In my opinion, the main issue remains the same as it was for the last two General Elections: who can you trust to manage YOUR money?